Another hazard of Laptopistan - slow WiFi

This is hardly unexpected, but one of the side effects of everyone using Starbucks as a de facto workplace and internet cafe is that their WiFi is heavily stressed. People watching online video, using Remote Desktop (like me), probably even BitTorrent. I don't know what sort of routers they put in these coffee shops, but they often seem to be unequal to the load they're handling.

This morning I'm in a Starbucks, and my connection went from perfectly fine, at 8:30 AM before anyone was here, to barely usable now that I'm surrounded by laptops. One more reason for actual workspace.

Laptopistan is getting crowded

This is purely anecdotal, of course, but on the occasions when I've ventured out from my home office to get some fresh air or avoid being pestered by my dog, I've seen more and more people working remotely. Your average Starbucks is completely overrun with laptop-facing contractors, remote workers, and students these days, as are most other public areas with seating and free WiFi. Getting a table all to yourself is becoming rare, and forget about finding an open power outlet!

This says to me that there is a serious hole in the co-working space market. Assuming these Starbucks campers order an average of a $4 latte per day (some get black coffee, which is cheaper, but some add a muffin), and the cost of a dedicated desk at Affinity Lab is on the order of $900, that works out to a price differential of $800/mo. Surely there must be a point somewhere in the middle for which one could add certain beneficial services while keeping the cost enough to attract customers.

Starbucks, after all, does not exactly inspire loyalty - the seating is functional, but rarely comfortable; there are never enough outlets; the coffee is okay but somewhat expensive; the WiFi is often slow; the environment is noisier than a worker would prefer; and the venues themselves hardly encourage hard work. If I could pay $200/mo for a similarly casual but better-outfitted space in which I could work, chat, and drink coffee, I would jump at the chance. I've been trying to check out DCIOLab, but they haven't emailed me back.

Makes me think there's a definite business opportunity here, but certainly a risky one. Timing is important - is NOW the inflection point in density of remote workers, or a year from now? You can quickly go broke renting a commercial space for a year with not enough customers. Is there enough consistency in the office support requirements of the proposed customers? A good coffee pot or two (or a Chemex or Aeropress, maybe) is definitely necessary, but a copier? Fax machine? Phones? A conference room?

These are ways to differentiate a workspace from a Starbucks, but I think they may raise the cost too much and get too little use. I don't need any of those things besides the coffee-making apparatus. In fact, all I want is coffee, power, internet, good light, and preferably high ceilings. Could one provide those things, pack people in as tightly as they do at Starbucks, and make money charging $200/mo?

Meeting new people in Laptopistan

This morning I'm back at Starbucks, as we haven't yet moved closer in to DC where there are alternatives to corporate coffee world, and I made the acquaintance of a woman who

1) made me explain the meaning of my t-shirt

2) asked to use my laptop (instead of hers, for some reason?) to check her email

3) inquired about what I do for a living

I'm pretty sure the next step will be to introduce me to her daughter/niece/granddaughter who's been looking for a nice Jewish boy (which I'm not, but I'm sure it wouldn't matter).

Well, I suppose it's more interesting than doing R regressions while sitting at home.

Life as a contractor

It's my own fault that I'm a contractor and not a full employee - a year ago, my girlfriend decided to go back to school in another state, and I followed her there. My office was gracious (desperate?) enough to keep me on as a remote employee, but I was converted to contractor status, for both employment flexibility (i.e. they can let me go easily if it doesn't work out) and tax liability purposes.

For the most part, this has worked out fine. Working from home can be a double-edged sword, but the non-existent commute is great and the ability to work from alternate locations seamlessly has been pretty nice - this summer we picked up and moved to Denver for 10 weeks with no interruption of my work, only a slight shift in working hours due to the time zone change.

But there are some definite drawbacks. My taxes are far more complicated now, I don't get employer-sponsored health insurance, and there's a bit of a disconnect from the rest of my team and the firm at large. This is both practical - I have difficulty hearing what's going on in many of my meetings, since I'm the only one on the phone instead of there in person - and psychological.

The latest case in point, and the catalyst for this post, occurred this morning. The chairman of my firm sent out an email announcing a minor contest sort of thing in which employees can win an electronic gizmo that shall remain nameless in exchange for updating their employee profile. I dutifully went to update mine, which I hadn't looked at since I was a Full-Time Employee... and found that I no longer have one. This is far from a big deal, but it's a reminder of the fact that although I work like an employee (I'm on a fixed rate, not an hourly one), consider myself part of the firm, and try to act in its best interest, there's a psychic distance between me and the Real Employees.

There are more examples. The firm celebrated its 20th birthday a short time ago, and Employees all received small gift bags. It should probably go without saying that I did not. On one's 5th anniversary as an Employee, one receives a very small token of acknowledgement of service to the firm. My 5th year is coming up, but I presume it will be sans token.

I assume this would be different at firms in which contracting is more widespread - contractors would be held either closer or farther away - but my situation is unusual at my office, so it's not worth HR's time to hold my hand through any weird episodes. Also, these are minor enough issues that I would feel ridiculous complaining about them in person, so I'm using this medium to work through them a little.

Anyway, I know that my blog is occasionally perused by people from my office, so let me reiterate that this is not a big deal and not intended to be a passive-aggressive complaint, it's just some musings on this strange state of employment that I, and a growing number of others, find myself in.

Laptopistan upgrade

3G vs 4G tethering: night and day. I can now click on things through my remote desktop session and have them actually respond, instead of doing the mental 2-count (or switching to Google Reader while waiting, which is always a productivity killer).

I have some concerns about the battery life of my new HTC Thunderbolt, and I'm not blown away by the form factor, but so far I definitely prefer it to my iPhone 3GS. And the 4G factor alone makes it totally worthwhile.

Context switching is more expensive when bandwidth is limited

This post is just made up of more idle musings and could really be shortened to a tweet, but while on the road this week with access to the office via questionable and/or slow internet connections, I've noticed that context switching, both literal and figurative, is much more expensive with low bandwidth.

This applies across all sorts of situations. I get a lot of IMs from co-workers, for example. Normally I don't notice their impact much, since I have two big monitors worth of screen real estate and I can switch back and forth between IM windows and coding or testing quickly. But with less screen space (1280 x 800 instead of 3840 x 1080), the IM windows take up more space and I have to move them around frequently, which takes up more time.

Also, with slow internet connections, actually switching between windows is sometimes difficult, as redrawing a bigger chunk of the screen causes the whole connection to freeze for as long as several minutes at a time. And as upstream bandwidth is always more limited than downstream, sometimes my typing or clicks don't get transmitted for extended periods of time. It's very frustrating, to the point where I'm planning to get a mobile internet solution of some kind very soon. The travel has also cost me quite a few mobile phone minutes, as I can't use VOIP over the sketchy internet connections.

In other remote working news, I've noticed two startups in the space mentioned recently on TechCrunch: LiquidSpace and LooseCubes. I'm hoping that one or both will help provide the co-working experience I've been seeking and not finding in DC (and potentially elsewhere).

The Perils of Laptopistan

I'm out in Laptopistan again today, this time in the principality of Starbucks, but not by choice. My power is out for the 3rd or 4th time since moving to the DC burbs, and in order to get any work done I had to get somewhere with Wifi. This Starbucks is packed, of course, with other people whose power is also out, making the internet access slow as molasses, and seating and power very difficult to come by. Fortunately, I brought a mini power strip, so I could add my laptop and Krystal's phone to an outlet without displacing anyone.

Anyway, my complaint is not so much that the situation is impossible, it's just small extra costs to this type of remote working:

- 20 mins looking for street parking in the snow = lost work time

- slow internet = lower productivity

- large latte = 4x the unit cost of coffee at home (which is better anyway, thanks to our Baratza grinder and French press)

- 20 mins spent waiting for a table = lost work time

- no power outlets available = additional capital goods required (power strip) plus the need to remember to bring them

- limited-time parking meters requiring movement of car after 4 hours = lost work time

If anyone at my office is reading this, don't worry, I'll make up the lost time, but my complaint still stands, because that cuts into my free time.

Anyway, obviously some establishments are better-suited to remote working than others; Peregrine Espresso is paradise compared to Starbucks, but it would have taken 90+ mins to get there this morning through the snow and non-working traffic lights. All of these complaints could be remedied by having access to a proper co-working space, so I suppose the best approach is to quantify these costs, find the appropriate break-even point, and seek co-working space at or below that price point.

Back in Laptopistan

At Port City Java in Capitol Hill today, just up the street from Peregrine, where I was last week, and there's a fair concentration of laptop users, but certainly not the packed house that there was at Peregrine. I'm guessing that's correlated to Port City's 3 stars on Yelp vs Peregrine's 4. But the WiFi is fast and there are some comfy chairs. Judgement on coffee still forthcoming.

One of the difficulties of working remotely in a shared environment is phone calls. I had a meeting today which is often cancelled, so I was hoping that it would be again today. But it wasn't, so I had to fire up Skype (which, thankfully, worked fine here), dial up the conference line, and participate in the call, wincing every time I had to speak from fear of offending the people around me. Fortunately, there was only one other person besides my girlfriend sitting nearby, so I wasn't as concerned as I would have been, but in a tighter space like Peregrine, it would be impossible to take a phone call without bothering people. The alternative would be to go outside or sit in one's car, both of which I've done in the past, but it's below freezing outside and my car is more than a block away, making neither of those options particularly palatable.

I suppose that in a true co-working space, phone calls would be expected and unavoidable, so both my concern and others' irritation would be lower. But I have yet to identify a suitable co-working facility in DC, and it's nice to get to change scenery each time I go to a new cafe, so for now I'll just live with the minor difficulties and keep hunting for the best WiFi and coffee.

Notes from Laptopistan

Credit to David Sax of the NYT for the name. Trying the working mode advocated in the article and occupying a spot in a cafe once a week or so. Clearly it requires some technique, however...

This afternoon, I worked out of Peregrine Espresso in Capitol Hill. It's a nice place, with good tea and coffee, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that it would be full of laptoppers. Every seat was full when I walked in. Fortunately, one person was packing up, so I got the table he vacated, but then gave it up to some people who were trying to have a conversation in favor of a seat at a bar. But after about an hour my back ached, and I didn't like fighting for elbow space with the people on either side. Plus, it's distracting to have two bright laptop screens on either side of you - I kept glancing over at each without meaning to, and alternated between feeling superior and jealous when noting that they were not doing any actual work.

Additional gear for the cafe survival kit for next time: headphones and an extension cord.